This is a joke now. Total lockdown meltdown around my little patch. Three sets of neighbours having barbecue or drinks on the lawn with family and friends (none of whom normally live there).
This is great. Weather fantastic. School out. Work cancelled for weeks. Etc etc.
Meanwhile the economy collapses and we enter the Covid Depression.
Some of this sort of thing is inevitable. The lockdown has been going on for about two months now, and expecting the whole population to keep away from family and friends indefinitely was never a realistic notion.
The longer such prohibitions exist, the more people will lose patience, or discipline, or get desperate, and break them. Especially if the households concerned consist only of members who are at very low risk (which is essentially everyone under 50 apart from those who are clinically vulnerable.)
The Government has the power to shutter businesses quite easily, but we're not a police state. There is very little it can do to forcibly separate private citizens. We'll all simply have to hope that these kinds of interactions don't make a massive difference to the rate of transmission of the illness or significantly increase the exposure of more vulnerable groups.
"The lockdown has been going on for about two months now, and expecting the whole population to keep away from family and friends indefinitely was never a realistic notion."
Which is why I argued that holding back on the start of lockdown was the right decision.
I see Trump is aggressively attacking China again to deflect blame.
This election is going to be hijacked into a who is toughest on China event. Can Biden make it about anything else?
Should be fairly easy to turn it onto the economy, which sounds like it'll be in the crapper by election day.
CBO predicts a second quarter drop of 38% on an annualised basis.
Annualised GDP numbers have always been stupid.
It will also result in journalists (who should know better) saying things like "Germany's economy, which contracted 9% in the quarter did better than the US which fell 38%".
NO YOU MORON. THE GERMAN NUMBER IS A QUARTERLY CHANGE. THE US NUMBER IS AN ANNUALISED CHANGE - IE FOUR TIMES LARGER.
I agree that they are stupid, I'm just reporting what they said.
I see Trump is aggressively attacking China again to deflect blame.
This election is going to be hijacked into a who is toughest on China event. Can Biden make it about anything else?
Republicans are going to open up the Ukraine Biden stuff again, and attack the original basis for the Russia investigation, and claim Biden is China's candidate. It will be 99% BS.
Meanwhile Trump is repeatedly firing Inspectors General to keep them from investigating his probably criminal behaviour.
I think this upcoming election is existential for America as not just leader of the free world but part of it.
Only if Trump has control of senate and house. If not he's constrained, by y' know, democracy.
Not really. Trump has the Supreme Court in his pocket, who are about to rule he can ignore congressional subpoeanas
If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
Some news about a Chinese COVID vaccine: experiments on monkeys showed that when exposed after vaccination they had no detectable virus in their respiratory tracts a week later (if I understand this correctly), whereas the equivalent experiment for the Oxford vaccine did not show this. Thus the monkeys with the Chinese vaccine were not sick, but they were also not infectious.
I hope that the government is prepared for the possibility that the most effective vaccine against COVID will be developed overseas, possibly in China.
Yes, I quite agree. Our rulers seem to think that only Great British scientists will find the holy grail. What should be happening, of course, is international scientific collaboration on a vaccine or other treatments, inspired by nationa leaders and maybe led by an international body - UN, WHO, who cares. Although this is probably going on between scientists, it is not being led or coordinated at a supra-national level. It seems logical that although a breakthrough could come in the UK, it is just as likely in Germany, France, USA, China, India, Japan or numerous other nations. Why is this not a global effort rather than a macho pursuit in individual countries? This demonstrates to me the real lack of global leadership during this crisis - we should be solving this collectively. Not really Boris's thing, though.
I see Trump is aggressively attacking China again to deflect blame.
This election is going to be hijacked into a who is toughest on China event. Can Biden make it about anything else?
Should be fairly easy to turn it onto the economy, which sounds like it'll be in the crapper by election day.
CBO predicts a second quarter drop of 38% on an annualised basis.
Annualised GDP numbers have always been stupid.
It will also result in journalists (who should know better) saying things like "Germany's economy, which contracted 9% in the quarter did better than the US which fell 38%".
NO YOU MORON. THE GERMAN NUMBER IS A QUARTERLY CHANGE. THE US NUMBER IS AN ANNUALISED CHANGE - IE FOUR TIMES LARGER.
I agree that they are stupid, I'm just reporting what they said.
I think he's raging at journalists, not you.
I know he was, but I just wanted to make clear I was passing it on as reported.
If masks have to be worn inside restaurants in Spain, how do the customers eat their food?
Well you know what they say - a restaurant is all about the ambience.
Ah yes, all the ambience of an operating theatre. Amazing that some entrepreneur didn’t come up with that idea before.
Somebody sort of did. Damien Hirst at the peak of britpop 90s opened a restaurant in Notting Hill called Pharmacy. You ate surrounded by all white decor and glass shelves full of bottles of pills. There was cool and there was ubercool - and then there was this place. I loved it. Went bust in less than a year.
You surprise me!
Did you not go there?
Haha! I didn’t earn trader-style money. It sounded ghastly and pretentious and I enjoy good tasty food not little blobs of sauces on triangular plates. Or whatever.
And when I was working and the children were small I never went out anywhere - other than children’s parties (l’d have paid good money to avoid those if I could. A special place in Purgatory is reserved for a certain type of party-organising North London Mummy.)
If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
It’s not a question of prioritising X over Y but of allowing people to make their own assessment of the risks they are prepared to run, something we do with all sorts of other risks, every single day.
Britain First leader Paul Golding has been found guilty of an offence under the Terrorism Act after refusing to give police access to his mobile phone on his return from a political trip to Russia.
Is this Pompeo’s ‘massive evidence’ of a lab accident in Wuhan ?
A military contractors’ report circulating on Capitol Hill claims to have evidence that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese lab. It’s filled with information that’s just plain wrong. https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-contractors-report-on-wuhan-lab-origins-of-coronavirus-is-bogus?ref=scroll ... Multiple congressional committees have obtained and are scrutinizing the 30-page report, produced by the Multi-Agency Collaboration Environment (MACE), a part of Sierra Nevada, a major Department of Defense contractor. The report claims to rely on social media postings, commercial satellite imagery, and cellphone location data to draw the conclusion that some sort of “hazardous event” occurred at the Wuhan virology lab in October 2019—an event that allowed COVID-19 to escape. It’s a theory that has gained currency on the political right and in the upper tiers of the Trump administration.
But the report’s claim centers around missing location data for up to seven phones — and in many cases, less than that. It’s too small a sample size to prove much of anything, especially when the same devices showed similar absences in the spring of 2019. The MACE document claims a November 2019 conference was canceled because of some calamity; in fact, there are selfies from the event.
What’s more, imagery collected by Maxar Technologies satellites and provided to The Daily Beast reveals a simpler, less exotic reason for why analysts believed “roadblocks” went into place around the lab after the supposed accident: road construction. The Maxar images also show typical workdays, with normal traffic patterns around the lab, after the supposedly cataclysmic event....
Apple, Google release technology for pandemic apps https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-apple-google-technology-pandemic-apps.html Apple and Google on Wednesday released long-awaited smartphone technology to automatically notify people if they might have been exposed to the coronavirus. The companies said 22 countries and several U.S. states are already planning to build voluntary phone apps using their software. It relies on Bluetooth wireless technology to detect when someone who downloaded the app has spent time near another app user who later tests positive for the virus.
Many governments have already tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to roll out their own phone apps to fight the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of those apps have encountered technical problems on Apple and Android phones and haven't been widely adopted...
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
Along with the inevitable tit-for-tat, Barnier makes two interesting points in that letter, in my view.
First that the only precedent for the agreement is the Political Declaration, not any other deals that the EU has made in the past, as Gove and Frost claim. Barnier clearly interprets the PD to his advantage, but he's right on the principle. The UK and Johnson in particular signed up to the PD as the negotiating brief.
Secondly that the Level Playing Field protections are a two way street. The UK is protected as well. He doesn't say this, generally the weaker party sign treaties for protection. Which is precisely why Trump is tearing up treaties.
I don't think he's right to say the PD is the only precedent. Certainly where the PD conflicts with other precedents then sure its reasonable to put the PD first, but where the PD doesn't conflict with other precedents then the two can and should go hand in hand.
Besides its entirely reasonable for Gove and Frost to say the PD was signed with other precedents in mind.
I see Trump is aggressively attacking China again to deflect blame.
This election is going to be hijacked into a who is toughest on China event. Can Biden make it about anything else?
Should be fairly easy to turn it onto the economy, which sounds like it'll be in the crapper by election day.
CBO predicts a second quarter drop of 38% on an annualised basis.
Annualised GDP numbers have always been stupid.
It will also result in journalists (who should know better) saying things like "Germany's economy, which contracted 9% in the quarter did better than the US which fell 38%".
NO YOU MORON. THE GERMAN NUMBER IS A QUARTERLY CHANGE. THE US NUMBER IS AN ANNUALISED CHANGE - IE FOUR TIMES LARGER.
I agree that they are stupid, I'm just reporting what they said.
I think he's raging at journalists, not you.
I am.
But I also think annualising GDP changes is stupid. Because it exaggerates one off shocks.
Apple, Google release technology for pandemic apps https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-apple-google-technology-pandemic-apps.html Apple and Google on Wednesday released long-awaited smartphone technology to automatically notify people if they might have been exposed to the coronavirus. The companies said 22 countries and several U.S. states are already planning to build voluntary phone apps using their software. It relies on Bluetooth wireless technology to detect when someone who downloaded the app has spent time near another app user who later tests positive for the virus.
Many governments have already tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to roll out their own phone apps to fight the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of those apps have encountered technical problems on Apple and Android phones and haven't been widely adopted...
Wait so the APIs are only being released today?
So going with an alternative method first won't have caused a delay presumably since the Google and Apple solution didn't even exist yet?
This is a joke now. Total lockdown meltdown around my little patch. Three sets of neighbours having barbecue or drinks on the lawn with family and friends (none of whom normally live there).
This is great. Weather fantastic. School out. Work cancelled for weeks. Etc etc.
Meanwhile the economy collapses and we enter the Covid Depression.
Some of this sort of thing is inevitable. The lockdown has been going on for about two months now, and expecting the whole population to keep away from family and friends indefinitely was never a realistic notion.
The longer such prohibitions exist, the more people will lose patience, or discipline, or get desperate, and break them. Especially if the households concerned consist only of members who are at very low risk (which is essentially everyone under 50 apart from those who are clinically vulnerable.)
The Government has the power to shutter businesses quite easily, but we're not a police state. There is very little it can do to forcibly separate private citizens. We'll all simply have to hope that these kinds of interactions don't make a massive difference to the rate of transmission of the illness or significantly increase the exposure of more vulnerable groups.
The lockdown was the wrong solution anyway. Telling the working population not to go to work and stopping children from going to school was always a bizarre way to protect the over-70s and the vulnerable. And moving the old and sick into care homes from hospitals has been a disaster.
If we need to lock down again in my lifetime, I hope we do it much smarter.
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
It’s not a question of prioritising X over Y but of allowing people to make their own assessment of the risks they are prepared to run, something we do with all sorts of other risks, every single day.
But of course it's not a question of "the risks they are prepared to run". It's also a question of the risk they are putting other people at.
It's such an obvious point you must be only too well aware of it.
I see Trump is aggressively attacking China again to deflect blame.
This election is going to be hijacked into a who is toughest on China event. Can Biden make it about anything else?
Republicans are going to open up the Ukraine Biden stuff again, and attack the original basis for the Russia investigation, and claim Biden is China's candidate. It will be 99% BS.
Meanwhile Trump is repeatedly firing Inspectors General to keep them from investigating his probably criminal behaviour.
I think this upcoming election is existential for America as not just leader of the free world but part of it.
Only if Trump has control of senate and house. If not he's constrained, by y' know, democracy.
Not really. Trump has the Supreme Court in his pocket, who are about to rule he can ignore congressional subpoeanas
The US Constitution's fabled checks and balances have crumbled remarkably easily.
If Biden somehow wins I suspect there will be lots of "Good Republicans" who will swear they opposed Trump all along.
This is a joke now. Total lockdown meltdown around my little patch. Three sets of neighbours having barbecue or drinks on the lawn with family and friends (none of whom normally live there).
This is great. Weather fantastic. School out. Work cancelled for weeks. Etc etc.
Meanwhile the economy collapses and we enter the Covid Depression.
Some of this sort of thing is inevitable. The lockdown has been going on for about two months now, and expecting the whole population to keep away from family and friends indefinitely was never a realistic notion.
The longer such prohibitions exist, the more people will lose patience, or discipline, or get desperate, and break them. Especially if the households concerned consist only of members who are at very low risk (which is essentially everyone under 50 apart from those who are clinically vulnerable.)
The Government has the power to shutter businesses quite easily, but we're not a police state. There is very little it can do to forcibly separate private citizens. We'll all simply have to hope that these kinds of interactions don't make a massive difference to the rate of transmission of the illness or significantly increase the exposure of more vulnerable groups.
The lockdown was the wrong solution anyway. Telling the working population not to go to work and stopping children from going to school was always a bizarre way to protect the over-70s and the vulnerable. And moving the old and sick into care homes from hospitals has been a disaster.
If we need to lock down again in my lifetime, I hope we do it much smarter.
We were looking down the barrel of hundreds of thousands of deaths. I'm far from convinced anything has been a disaster in that context.
Yes things could have been done better - its a good thing little reported that discharges from hospitals were 40 down (not up) into care homes, but the discharges that still happened may have been able to be done better - but if the alternative was hundreds of thousands of deaths then a real disaster has been averted.
Is this Pompeo’s ‘massive evidence’ of a lab accident in Wuhan ?
A military contractors’ report circulating on Capitol Hill claims to have evidence that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese lab. It’s filled with information that’s just plain wrong. https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-contractors-report-on-wuhan-lab-origins-of-coronavirus-is-bogus?ref=scroll ... Multiple congressional committees have obtained and are scrutinizing the 30-page report, produced by the Multi-Agency Collaboration Environment (MACE), a part of Sierra Nevada, a major Department of Defense contractor. The report claims to rely on social media postings, commercial satellite imagery, and cellphone location data to draw the conclusion that some sort of “hazardous event” occurred at the Wuhan virology lab in October 2019—an event that allowed COVID-19 to escape. It’s a theory that has gained currency on the political right and in the upper tiers of the Trump administration.
But the report’s claim centers around missing location data for up to seven phones — and in many cases, less than that. It’s too small a sample size to prove much of anything, especially when the same devices showed similar absences in the spring of 2019. The MACE document claims a November 2019 conference was canceled because of some calamity; in fact, there are selfies from the event.
What’s more, imagery collected by Maxar Technologies satellites and provided to The Daily Beast reveals a simpler, less exotic reason for why analysts believed “roadblocks” went into place around the lab after the supposed accident: road construction. The Maxar images also show typical workdays, with normal traffic patterns around the lab, after the supposedly cataclysmic event....
Pretty sure that's good enough for around 30% of US voters.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
Well, yes, and that is precisely the plan of the ultra brexiteer whackos
I live in a south east coastal town, I went for a run this morning at 7.30 the seafront was very busy. Later on the the town was almost as normal and a few people were swimming from the beach.
Nobody here knows anybody who has the virus. Just saying
If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
Hydroxychloroqin is a relatively cheap and widely available anti-malarial drug. What you should be looking at is those pharmaceuticals who will LOSE vast sums of money if it becomes the gold standard treatment, and what connections they may or may not have with the political figures and the media condemning the drug as the new 'hicks drinking bleach' scenario. Which it isn't.
The lockdown was the wrong solution anyway. Telling the working population not to go to work and stopping children from going to school was always a bizarre way to protect the over-70s and the vulnerable. And moving the old and sick into care homes from hospitals has been a disaster.
If we need to lock down again in my lifetime, I hope we do it much smarter.
Excellent hindsight with which so many are so blessed.
In mid March it didn't look that clear - the evidence from Northern Italy in particular was of an unchecked virus infecting large numbers of people and overwhelming intensive care units.
The only way to check the spread of the virus was to reduce transmission and that meant keeping people in their homes away from other people.
As the figures show, the nation was already locking itself down the week after Cheltenham and a week before the "official" announcement from Johnson. I last attended a face-to-face meeting on March 16th and Mrs Stodge was sent home on the 19th - the Government was so far behind what was happening it was embarrassing.
The nation locked itself down as a voluntary act of self preservation and is now unlocking itself as the fear starts to pass.
This is a joke now. Total lockdown meltdown around my little patch. Three sets of neighbours having barbecue or drinks on the lawn with family and friends (none of whom normally live there).
This is great. Weather fantastic. School out. Work cancelled for weeks. Etc etc.
Meanwhile the economy collapses and we enter the Covid Depression.
Some of this sort of thing is inevitable. The lockdown has been going on for about two months now, and expecting the whole population to keep away from family and friends indefinitely was never a realistic notion.
The longer such prohibitions exist, the more people will lose patience, or discipline, or get desperate, and break them. Especially if the households concerned consist only of members who are at very low risk (which is essentially everyone under 50 apart from those who are clinically vulnerable.)
The Government has the power to shutter businesses quite easily, but we're not a police state. There is very little it can do to forcibly separate private citizens. We'll all simply have to hope that these kinds of interactions don't make a massive difference to the rate of transmission of the illness or significantly increase the exposure of more vulnerable groups.
"The lockdown has been going on for about two months now, and expecting the whole population to keep away from family and friends indefinitely was never a realistic notion."
Which is why I argued that holding back on the start of lockdown was the right decision.
We held back until 200,000 per day were being infected. You think this was the right strategy?
I see Trump is aggressively attacking China again to deflect blame.
This election is going to be hijacked into a who is toughest on China event. Can Biden make it about anything else?
Should be fairly easy to turn it onto the economy, which sounds like it'll be in the crapper by election day.
CBO predicts a second quarter drop of 38% on an annualised basis.
Annualised GDP numbers have always been stupid.
It will also result in journalists (who should know better) saying things like "Germany's economy, which contracted 9% in the quarter did better than the US which fell 38%".
NO YOU MORON. THE GERMAN NUMBER IS A QUARTERLY CHANGE. THE US NUMBER IS AN ANNUALISED CHANGE - IE FOUR TIMES LARGER.
I agree that they are stupid, I'm just reporting what they said.
I think he's raging at journalists, not you.
I am.
But I also think annualising GDP changes is stupid. Because it exaggerates one off shocks.
I've never understood why Americans take an easily measurable figure and then mangle it.
This is a joke now. Total lockdown meltdown around my little patch. Three sets of neighbours having barbecue or drinks on the lawn with family and friends (none of whom normally live there).
This is great. Weather fantastic. School out. Work cancelled for weeks. Etc etc.
Meanwhile the economy collapses and we enter the Covid Depression.
Some of this sort of thing is inevitable. The lockdown has been going on for about two months now, and expecting the whole population to keep away from family and friends indefinitely was never a realistic notion.
The longer such prohibitions exist, the more people will lose patience, or discipline, or get desperate, and break them. Especially if the households concerned consist only of members who are at very low risk (which is essentially everyone under 50 apart from those who are clinically vulnerable.)
The Government has the power to shutter businesses quite easily, but we're not a police state. There is very little it can do to forcibly separate private citizens. We'll all simply have to hope that these kinds of interactions don't make a massive difference to the rate of transmission of the illness or significantly increase the exposure of more vulnerable groups.
The lockdown was the wrong solution anyway. Telling the working population not to go to work and stopping children from going to school was always a bizarre way to protect the over-70s and the vulnerable. And moving the old and sick into care homes from hospitals has been a disaster.
If we need to lock down again in my lifetime, I hope we do it much smarter.
We were looking down the barrel of hundreds of thousands of deaths. I'm far from convinced anything has been a disaster in that context.
Yes things could have been done better - its a good thing little reported that discharges from hospitals were 40 down (not up) into care homes, but the discharges that still happened may have been able to be done better - but if the alternative was hundreds of thousands of deaths then a real disaster has been averted.
The hundreds of thousands of deaths were avoided by locking people in their homes rather than people continuing to social and go to work.
The care home deaths were because people in a rush to solve problem A (more hospital beds) took shortcuts while solving that problem.
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
It’s not a question of prioritising X over Y but of allowing people to make their own assessment of the risks they are prepared to run, something we do with all sorts of other risks, every single day.
But of course it's not a question of "the risks they are prepared to run". It's also a question of the risk they are putting other people at.
It's such an obvious point you must be only too well aware of it.
It is an obvious point but not in the way it is often presented. We do this all the time too - every time we drive, for instance, or leave the house with an infection or don’t vaccinate our children or don’t wash our hands after using the loo or smoke or drink or have unprotected sex when suffering from an STD or cough in public without using a hankie.
The issue is what limits if any should be placed on this, what the costs of doing so are and whether those costs outweigh or are outweighed by the benefits.
I see Trump is aggressively attacking China again to deflect blame.
This election is going to be hijacked into a who is toughest on China event. Can Biden make it about anything else?
Should be fairly easy to turn it onto the economy, which sounds like it'll be in the crapper by election day.
CBO predicts a second quarter drop of 38% on an annualised basis.
Annualised GDP numbers have always been stupid.
It will also result in journalists (who should know better) saying things like "Germany's economy, which contracted 9% in the quarter did better than the US which fell 38%".
NO YOU MORON. THE GERMAN NUMBER IS A QUARTERLY CHANGE. THE US NUMBER IS AN ANNUALISED CHANGE - IE FOUR TIMES LARGER.
I agree that they are stupid, I'm just reporting what they said.
I think he's raging at journalists, not you.
I am.
But I also think annualising GDP changes is stupid. Because it exaggerates one off shocks.
I've never understood why Americans take an easily measurable figure and then mangle it.
Economic data come in different frequencies and annualising allows easy comparison between quarterly and annual gdp so that we can see whether the pace is accelerating or decelerating without having to take the fourth root or whatever.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
So its a bit like having a foot removed, a mere trifle and not of any consequence whatsover in comparison to having the offending leg amputated instead?
This is a joke now. Total lockdown meltdown around my little patch. Three sets of neighbours having barbecue or drinks on the lawn with family and friends (none of whom normally live there).
This is great. Weather fantastic. School out. Work cancelled for weeks. Etc etc.
Meanwhile the economy collapses and we enter the Covid Depression.
Some of this sort of thing is inevitable. The lockdown has been going on for about two months now, and expecting the whole population to keep away from family and friends indefinitely was never a realistic notion.
The longer such prohibitions exist, the more people will lose patience, or discipline, or get desperate, and break them. Especially if the households concerned consist only of members who are at very low risk (which is essentially everyone under 50 apart from those who are clinically vulnerable.)
The Government has the power to shutter businesses quite easily, but we're not a police state. There is very little it can do to forcibly separate private citizens. We'll all simply have to hope that these kinds of interactions don't make a massive difference to the rate of transmission of the illness or significantly increase the exposure of more vulnerable groups.
The lockdown was the wrong solution anyway. Telling the working population not to go to work and stopping children from going to school was always a bizarre way to protect the over-70s and the vulnerable. And moving the old and sick into care homes from hospitals has been a disaster.
If we need to lock down again in my lifetime, I hope we do it much smarter.
The lockdown happened because our response had already failed. We didn't have enough testing. We lost track of the majority of people infected. We couldn't ensure that those infected didn't infect others.
I don't think that seeking to come up with a better form of lockdown is the right response - particularly when the next virus might well spread in different ways, and so would require a different lockdown to be effective. An indiscriminate lockdown will always be the last resort option when other approaches have failed.
What we can see from countries that have had a good response is that we need to be much better prepared to do contact tracing and to have a much greater capacity to expand rapid diagnostic testing. And we need to be less fatalistic about travellers bringing a deadly infection into the country.
I think those would have made the difference between our current ~50,000 deaths and keeping the toll under 1,000. And, of course, the next virus could have an infection fatality rate a lot higher than 1%.
The whole "work" business was shockingly communicated at the start of the lockdown. You could read 50 shades of ambiguity into what the PM meant. The days around the lockdown were probably some of the most fraught I've had where I work as everyone tried to work out precisely what the rules meant and whatnot.
I'd been working from home (Or more accurately working out how to work from home, what I could and couldn't do and thinking about what potential system changes may need to take place) a week before the lockdown as I'd been chatting with a friend who almost certainly had it. I think we got it right with keeping the manufacturing staff working (socially distanced) and clerical & other office staff transposing to work from home. But the initial Gov't guidance (Subsequently clarified) was a mess for small and medium businesses everywhere. Speed was of the essence at the start of the lockdown, and some degree of overinterpretation of the general "Stay at Home" message perhaps aided the need to crush down on the infamous R measure quickly. Whether that was the intention of the message I'm not certain.
This is a joke now. Total lockdown meltdown around my little patch. Three sets of neighbours having barbecue or drinks on the lawn with family and friends (none of whom normally live there).
This is great. Weather fantastic. School out. Work cancelled for weeks. Etc etc.
Meanwhile the economy collapses and we enter the Covid Depression.
Psychologically, furlough has been a disaster. It has persuaded the slower middle classes (ie the left, metropolitan Labour voters, Remoaners, Lib Dems, etc) that we are just on a kind of holiday, and the economy will magically resume as it was after 3 months of these twats doing nothing and drinking Malbec rose in the garden
Some of them even fled to their holiday homes to escape the virus.
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
600,000 die every year. Let the fat fucks croak
I do think this site would be better without such comments.
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
It’s not a question of prioritising X over Y but of allowing people to make their own assessment of the risks they are prepared to run, something we do with all sorts of other risks, every single day.
But of course it's not a question of "the risks they are prepared to run". It's also a question of the risk they are putting other people at.
It's such an obvious point you must be only too well aware of it.
It is an obvious point but not in the way it is often presented. We do this all the time too - every time we drive, for instance, or leave the house with an infection or don’t vaccinate our children or don’t wash our hands after using the loo or smoke or drink or have unprotected sex when suffering from an STD or cough in public without using a hankie.
The issue is what limits if any should be placed on this, what the costs of doing so are and whether those costs outweigh or are outweighed by the benefits.
"or don’t vaccinate our children" special place in hell for those people.
This is a joke now. Total lockdown meltdown around my little patch. Three sets of neighbours having barbecue or drinks on the lawn with family and friends (none of whom normally live there).
This is great. Weather fantastic. School out. Work cancelled for weeks. Etc etc.
Meanwhile the economy collapses and we enter the Covid Depression.
Psychologically, furlough has been a disaster. It has persuaded the slower middle classes (ie the left, metropolitan Labour voters, Remoaners, Lib Dems, etc) that we are just on a kind of holiday, and the economy will magically resume as it was after 3 months of these twats doing nothing and drinking Malbec rose in the garden
Some of them even fled to their holiday homes to escape the virus.
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
It’s not a question of prioritising X over Y but of allowing people to make their own assessment of the risks they are prepared to run, something we do with all sorts of other risks, every single day.
But of course it's not a question of "the risks they are prepared to run". It's also a question of the risk they are putting other people at.
It's such an obvious point you must be only too well aware of it.
It is an obvious point but not in the way it is often presented. We do this all the time too - every time we drive, for instance, or leave the house with an infection or don’t vaccinate our children or don’t wash our hands after using the loo or smoke or drink or have unprotected sex when suffering from an STD or cough in public without using a hankie.
Blimey, Cyclefree. I had no idea you led such an interesting life...
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
Today I chaired an all-day technical meeting with over 20 attendees. Went perfectly well. Everyone could contribute when they needed to, one shared screen meant everyone could see the same thing, including the notes and actions as they were recorded.
And no need for a load of us to travel hundreds of miles to attend, stay away from home in a Travelodge and get home close to midnight tonight.
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
600,000 die every year. Let the fat fucks croak
I do think this site would be better without such comments.
--AS
Thankyou for your - < checks screen > - third ever comment on PB
How many are you on, out of interest?
I could do the sums for myself if you let me know how many names you post under...
(By the way, AS’s count reset recently for reasons unknown. S/he has posted more than three comments.)
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
Is anything more ephemeral than a political inscription in stone? Lasted longer than the Ed stone though.
Strangely it's being reported that 60% of H-W students voted to keep it. Maybe fee paying students votes count as double?
The select Scottish students who got into HWU enjoyed the zero fee arrangement even though it made entry more difficult for others. I think it's called kicking away the ladder once you've made it over the wall.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
What's that? A tariff on Good Brie? To the barricades, Comrades!
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
Should add if this goes ahead there will be humongous smuggling from NI to GB. Possibly also across the Channel. Not too sure about those Customs checks being in place.
Is anything more ephemeral than a political inscription in stone? Lasted longer than the Ed stone though.
Strangely it's being reported that 60% of H-W students voted to keep it. Maybe fee paying students votes count as double?
The select Scottish students who got into HWU enjoyed the zero fee arrangement even though it made entry more difficult for others. I think it's called kicking away the ladder once you've made it over the wall.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
What's that? A tariff on Good Brie? To the barricades, Comrades!
I’m intrigued. Would you have not been too bothered if it had been bad Brie?
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
It’s not a question of prioritising X over Y but of allowing people to make their own assessment of the risks they are prepared to run, something we do with all sorts of other risks, every single day.
But of course it's not a question of "the risks they are prepared to run". It's also a question of the risk they are putting other people at.
It's such an obvious point you must be only too well aware of it.
It is an obvious point but not in the way it is often presented. We do this all the time too - every time we drive, for instance, or leave the house with an infection or don’t vaccinate our children or don’t wash our hands after using the loo or smoke or drink or have unprotected sex when suffering from an STD or cough in public without using a hankie.
Blimey, Cyclefree. I had no idea you led such an interesting life...
I hate to disappoint but I’ve done only 2 of those things knowingly and been a victim of most of the others .......
Now the only risk I run is if Herdwick sheep become killers.........
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
What's that? A tariff on Good Brie? To the barricades, Comrades!
I’m intrigued. Would you have not been too bothered if it had been bad Brie?
A refer the honourable member to a Catherine Tate sketch with a passing reference to Good Brie.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
What's that? A tariff on Good Brie? To the barricades, Comrades!
I’m intrigued. Would you have not been too bothered if it had been bad Brie?
The least interesting cheese in France. Pasteurised into tasteless oblivion
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
Should add if this goes ahead there will be humongous smuggling from NI to GB. Possibly also across the Channel. Not too sure about those Customs checks being in place.
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
600,000 die every year. Let the fat fucks croak
I do think this site would be better without such comments.
--AS
Thankyou for your - < checks screen > - third ever comment on PB
Three comments, two likes, a 66.66% success rate. The rest of can only dream of such a ratio.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
Should add if this goes ahead there will be humongous smuggling from NI to GB. Possibly also across the Channel. Not too sure about those Customs checks being in place.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
So its a bit like having a foot removed, a mere trifle and not of any consequence whatsover in comparison to having the offending leg amputated instead?
Hard Brexit is not a foot amputation, you spineless cuck. We know this because we now KNOW what a real disaster feels like: as we’re in one.
If you need an analogy Hard Brexit is tonsillitis, Corona is throat cancer.
Steady on old boy!
If my analogy was poor, and I am happy to concede, I am not sure yours is much better.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
If its £1.60 better per kg than something home-produced, and if I want to buy it at the price then it seems fine. Obviously home-produced cheeses compete better, and at that price I may decide not to buy.
It's always been 'kilogram' rather that 'kilogramme' by the way. I learnt that whilst listening to the bbc service on my radiophone.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
What's that? A tariff on Good Brie? To the barricades, Comrades!
I’m intrigued. Would you have not been too bothered if it had been bad Brie?
The least interesting cheese in France. Pasteurised into tasteless oblivion
Lol "Skegness beach had one public toilet available"
One public toilet available in a pandemic is a terrible idea, you're best off with either zero so people use their own campervan, the woods or the sea; or loads open (That encourages people I suppose though). One is probably the worst number, must have been absolubtely wretched at the end of the day and likely a Covid risk.
Lol "Skegness beach had one public toilet available"
One public toilet available in a pandemic is a terrible idea, you're best off with either zero so people use their own campervan, the woods or the sea; or loads open (That encourages people I suppose though). One is probably the worst number, must have been absolubtely wretched at the end of the day and likely a Covid risk.
Just listened to Freakonomics episode on what US universities have planned for new academic year & one of the uni leaders brought up toilets as something they had identified as a massive problem.
I see that you don’t have to wear a mask if you’re eating or drinking or have something like asthma.
So this requirement is less than it seems in practice.
Or where social distancing of >2m is possible if I read it correctly
Yes - but you will have to shout loudly at people to make yourself heard thus presumably spreading any germs you have more widely and effectively than if you were close to them and speaking in a normal way.
It’s utter balls, frankly. Trying to socialise in such a way under penalty of enforcement is ludicrous. We really are not thinking straight about risk nor are we learning the lessons from our forefathers who did have to live with such risks - and much more recently than many realise.
Yeah - why let the prospect of a few hundred thousand people dying stand in the way of socialising? Especially when it's mainly useless old people who will die, not the ones socialising. The cost of caring for all those old people was cramping our style far too much even before all this fuss.
Thus proving @Cyclefree right. Some people are not thinking straight about risk. .
No, but seriously, if - given the fact that 60,000-70,000 are estimated to have died as a result of around 10% of the population having been infected - you have trouble with seeing that hundreds of thousands are going to die if we prioritise "socialising" over preventing the spread of the virus, then you're hardly in a position to lecture people about the evaluation of risk!
600,000 die every year. Let the fat fucks croak
I do think this site would be better without such comments.
--AS
Thankyou for your - < checks screen > - third ever comment on PB
Three comments, two likes, a 66.66% success rate. The rest of can only dream of such a ratio.
Welcome Mr or Ms Singing!
Cheers! I had a few posts before my counter reset for some reason.
(Sadly, my group singing is on indefinite hiatus - the American Choral Directors Association recently convened a medical panel who gave some pretty stark advice about choirs not resuming until a vaccine is available. One can always sing at home, though!)
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
I just don’t care. No one cares any more. The EU is a shitshow, the latest mad Franco-German scheme is symptom, it means endless borrowing on the German, Swedish, Dutch, Austrian dime, the Eastern Europeans hate it, it means transferring money to wealthier Italians forever, it’s like mad Merkel’s migration policy for Syrians.
Germans might just buy it, out of guilt, I predict the other Frugals won’t, and if by some miracle they do, the bitterness will be epochal.
We need to get out ASAFP. If the price is Hard Brexit so be it. We have our own problems and we can solve our own problems.
You could exchange the EU nations for UK regions couldn't you?" It means endless borrowing on the London, Surrey, Hertfordshire and Berkshire wallets. The West-midlanders hate it but the poorer regions love it."
"The Bitterness is Epochal." Or is it?
Is the sacrifice made to support your neighbour worth it because seeing them impoverished shouldn't make you feel richer? Maybe the EU will spread its wealth to help all of its members or maybe it won't.
But what is the UK's attitude? "I hope my roof doesn't catch fire from my neighbour's burning house?" Frankly with a view like that, its hardly worth backing, opposing or even engaging with: better gone with all the worst angels of human nature which it has assimilated.
Oh and "let the fat fuckers croak", says more than enough about you.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
If its £1.60 better per kg than something home-produced, and if I want to buy it at the price then it seems fine. Obviously home-produced cheeses compete better, and at that price I may decide not to buy.
It's always been 'kilogram' rather that 'kilogramme' by the way. I learnt that whilst listening to the bbc service on my radiophone.
The main thing this tells me is that the government doesn't expect to implement these tariffs. Not sure whether this is because the govt thinks they will agree an FTA with the EU or because they haven't thought things through.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
If its £1.60 better per kg than something home-produced, and if I want to buy it at the price then it seems fine. Obviously home-produced cheeses compete better, and at that price I may decide not to buy.
It's always been 'kilogram' rather that 'kilogramme' by the way. I learnt that whilst listening to the bbc service on my radiophone.
The main thing this tells me is that the government doesn't expect to implement these tariffs. Not sure whether this is because the govt thinks they will agree an FTA with the EU or because they haven't thought things through.
Well of course these tariffs are those of others. Export tariffs are really no concern.. The EU will never maintain them. Import tariffs are far more troublesome. (Imports into EU)
New analysis by Oxford University for The Telegraph shows that six major London hospital trusts have reported no deaths in the past 48 hours.
Homerton, University College London, Hillingdon, North Middlesex, Whittington Health, and Guy’s and St Thomas', were recording up to 16 deaths a day at the peak of the crisis, and have totalled more than 1,000 deaths since the start of the epidemic between them.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
I just don’t care. No one cares any more. The EU is a shitshow, the latest mad Franco-German scheme is symptom, it means endless borrowing on the German, Swedish, Dutch, Austrian dime, the Eastern Europeans hate it, it means transferring money to wealthier Italians forever, it’s like mad Merkel’s migration policy for Syrians.
Germans might just buy it, out of guilt, I predict the other Frugals won’t, and if by some miracle they do, the bitterness will be epochal.
We need to get out ASAFP. If the price is Hard Brexit so be it. We have our own problems and we can solve our own problems.
You could exchange the EU nations for UK regions couldn't you?" It means endless borrowing on the London, Surrey, Hertfordshire and Berkshire wallets. The West-midlanders hate it but the poorer regions love it."
"The Bitterness is Epochal." Or is it?
Is the sacrifice made to support your neighbour worth it because seeing them impoverished shouldn't make you feel richer? Maybe the EU will spread its wealth to help all of its members or maybe it won't.
But what is the UK's attitude? "I hope my roof doesn't catch fire from my neighbour's burning house?" Frankly with a view like that, its hardly worth backing, opposing or even engaging with: better gone with all the worst angels of human nature which it has assimilated.
Oh and "let the fat fuckers croak", says more than enough about you.
Another one with a history of.... < CHECKS PAGE AGAIN > Ah yes. 32 comments. Lol
Young adults are the most likely age group to be infected with coronavirus, new figures suggest.
Snapshot surveillance data suggests that those aged 17 to 29 are the most likely group to carry the infection - although they are far less likely than older people to fall seriously ill.
The sampling by Public Health England (PHE), which occurred as the epidemic approached its peak, showed that in early April, around 11 per cent of those aged between 17 and 29 were infected with the virus.
Those in their 30s were the age group with the second highest number of infections, at around 10 per cent, with rates closer to seven per cent among those in their 60s.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
I just don’t care. No one cares any more. The EU is a shitshow, the latest mad Franco-German scheme is symptom, it means endless borrowing on the German, Swedish, Dutch, Austrian dime, the Eastern Europeans hate it, it means transferring money to wealthier Italians forever, it’s like mad Merkel’s migration policy for Syrians.
Germans might just buy it, out of guilt, I predict the other Frugals won’t, and if by some miracle they do, the bitterness will be epochal.
We need to get out ASAFP. If the price is Hard Brexit so be it. We have our own problems and we can solve our own problems.
You could exchange the EU nations for UK regions couldn't you?" It means endless borrowing on the London, Surrey, Hertfordshire and Berkshire wallets. The West-midlanders hate it but the poorer regions love it."
"The Bitterness is Epochal." Or is it?
Is the sacrifice made to support your neighbour worth it because seeing them impoverished shouldn't make you feel richer? Maybe the EU will spread its wealth to help all of its members or maybe it won't.
But what is the UK's attitude? "I hope my roof doesn't catch fire from my neighbour's burning house?" Frankly with a view like that, its hardly worth backing, opposing or even engaging with: better gone with all the worst angels of human nature which it has assimilated.
Oh and "let the fat fuckers croak", says more than enough about you.
Another one with a history of.... < CHECKS PAGE AGAIN > Ah yes. 32 comments. Lol
Well, you certainly put Mr/Ms ExTory in their place with that forensic deconstruction of their post. Well done you! Hope the rest of your bottle is going down well.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
If its £1.60 better per kg than something home-produced, and if I want to buy it at the price then it seems fine. Obviously home-produced cheeses compete better, and at that price I may decide not to buy.
It's always been 'kilogram' rather that 'kilogramme' by the way. I learnt that whilst listening to the bbc service on my radiophone.
The main thing this tells me is that the government doesn't expect to implement these tariffs. Not sure whether this is because the govt thinks they will agree an FTA with the EU or because they haven't thought things through.
Well of course these tariffs are those of others. Export tariffs are really no concern.. The EU will never maintain them. Import tariffs are far more troublesome. (Imports into EU)
Those are the new UK import tariffs. To be sure, importers of UK goods into the Continent and Northern Ireland will have to pay EU tariffs, absent an FTA by December.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
I just don’t care. No one cares any more. The EU is a shitshow, the latest mad Franco-German scheme is symptom, it means endless borrowing on the German, Swedish, Dutch, Austrian dime, the Eastern Europeans hate it, it means transferring money to wealthier Italians forever, it’s like mad Merkel’s migration policy for Syrians.
Germans might just buy it, out of guilt, I predict the other Frugals won’t, and if by some miracle they do, the bitterness will be epochal.
We need to get out ASAFP. If the price is Hard Brexit so be it. We have our own problems and we can solve our own problems.
You could exchange the EU nations for UK regions couldn't you?" It means endless borrowing on the London, Surrey, Hertfordshire and Berkshire wallets. The West-midlanders hate it but the poorer regions love it."
"The Bitterness is Epochal." Or is it?
Is the sacrifice made to support your neighbour worth it because seeing them impoverished shouldn't make you feel richer? Maybe the EU will spread its wealth to help all of its members or maybe it won't.
But what is the UK's attitude? "I hope my roof doesn't catch fire from my neighbour's burning house?" Frankly with a view like that, its hardly worth backing, opposing or even engaging with: better gone with all the worst angels of human nature which it has assimilated.
Oh and "let the fat fuckers croak", says more than enough about you.
Another one with a history of.... < CHECKS PAGE AGAIN > Ah yes. 32 comments. Lol
What are you drinking tonight? Cheap Lidl Rioja always makes me grumpy too, whereas say a Hermitage mellows the soul.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
I just don’t care. No one cares any more. The EU is a shitshow, the latest mad Franco-German scheme is symptom, it means endless borrowing on the German, Swedish, Dutch, Austrian dime, the Eastern Europeans hate it, it means transferring money to wealthier Italians forever, it’s like mad Merkel’s migration policy for Syrians.
Germans might just buy it, out of guilt, I predict the other Frugals won’t, and if by some miracle they do, the bitterness will be epochal.
We need to get out ASAFP. If the price is Hard Brexit so be it. We have our own problems and we can solve our own problems.
You could exchange the EU nations for UK regions couldn't you?" It means endless borrowing on the London, Surrey, Hertfordshire and Berkshire wallets. The West-midlanders hate it but the poorer regions love it."
"The Bitterness is Epochal." Or is it?
Is the sacrifice made to support your neighbour worth it because seeing them impoverished shouldn't make you feel richer? Maybe the EU will spread its wealth to help all of its members or maybe it won't.
But what is the UK's attitude? "I hope my roof doesn't catch fire from my neighbour's burning house?" Frankly with a view like that, its hardly worth backing, opposing or even engaging with: better gone with all the worst angels of human nature which it has assimilated.
Oh and "let the fat fuckers croak", says more than enough about you.
Another one with a history of.... < CHECKS PAGE AGAIN > Ah yes. 32 comments. Lol
Well, you certainly put Mr/Ms ExTory in their place with that forensic deconstruction of their post. Well done you! Hope the rest of your bottle is going down well.
You only have 1930(ish) posts Mr Seal. Expect a sizzling riposte!
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
If its £1.60 better per kg than something home-produced, and if I want to buy it at the price then it seems fine. Obviously home-produced cheeses compete better, and at that price I may decide not to buy.
It's always been 'kilogram' rather that 'kilogramme' by the way. I learnt that whilst listening to the bbc service on my radiophone.
The main thing this tells me is that the government doesn't expect to implement these tariffs. Not sure whether this is because the govt thinks they will agree an FTA with the EU or because they haven't thought things through.
Well of course these tariffs are those of others. Export tariffs are really no concern.. The EU will never maintain them. Import tariffs are far more troublesome. (Imports into EU)
Those are the new UK import tariffs. To be sure, importers of UK goods into the Continent and Northern Ireland will have to pay EU tariffs, absent an FTA by December.
Oh well if these are WTA import tariffs then we can just choose not to collect them. I'd assumed as you'd said 'if the UK doesn't agree' that these were export tariffs that the EU was imposing.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
I just don’t care. No one cares any more. The EU is a shitshow, the latest mad Franco-German scheme is symptom, it means endless borrowing on the German, Swedish, Dutch, Austrian dime, the Eastern Europeans hate it, it means transferring money to wealthier Italians forever, it’s like mad Merkel’s migration policy for Syrians.
Germans might just buy it, out of guilt, I predict the other Frugals won’t, and if by some miracle they do, the bitterness will be epochal.
We need to get out ASAFP. If the price is Hard Brexit so be it. We have our own problems and we can solve our own problems.
You could exchange the EU nations for UK regions couldn't you?" It means endless borrowing on the London, Surrey, Hertfordshire and Berkshire wallets. The West-midlanders hate it but the poorer regions love it."
"The Bitterness is Epochal." Or is it?
Is the sacrifice made to support your neighbour worth it because seeing them impoverished shouldn't make you feel richer? Maybe the EU will spread its wealth to help all of its members or maybe it won't.
But what is the UK's attitude? "I hope my roof doesn't catch fire from my neighbour's burning house?" Frankly with a view like that, its hardly worth backing, opposing or even engaging with: better gone with all the worst angels of human nature which it has assimilated.
Oh and "let the fat fuckers croak", says more than enough about you.
Another one with a history of.... < CHECKS PAGE AGAIN > Ah yes. 32 comments. Lol
Well, you certainly put Mr/Ms ExTory in their place with that forensic deconstruction of their post. Well done you! Hope the rest of your bottle is going down well.
You only have 1930(ish) posts Mr Seal. Expect a sizzling riposte!
I must, for entirely non-selfish reasons, object to the developing view that one should expect higher quality ripostes depending on post count.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
Should add if this goes ahead there will be humongous smuggling from NI to GB. Possibly also across the Channel. Not too sure about those Customs checks being in place.
We have a new market leader for antibody testing....
Ortho Clinical Diagnostics’ newly PHE-approved test outperformed the other two. Ortho, based in Cardiff for 40 years, says its test is 100% specific for Covid-19, which means it does not confuse the antibodies produced in response to the virus with those from other coronaviruses, including the common cold. Roche’s test has been validated by PHE as 99.8% specific and Abbott’s as 99.6% specific.
We have a new market leader for antibody testing....
Ortho Clinical Diagnostics’ newly PHE-approved test outperformed the other two. Ortho, based in Cardiff for 40 years, says its test is 100% specific for Covid-19, which means it does not confuse the antibodies produced in response to the virus with those from other coronaviruses, including the common cold. Roche’s test has been validated by PHE as 99.8% specific and Abbott’s as 99.6% specific.
"There is no automatic entitlement to any benefits that the EU may have offered or granted in other contexts and circumstances to other, often very different, partners."
I think if we end up walking away then in the battle of public opinion the UK government has easily won this round over Barnier.
Quoting chapter and verse what they're looking for, why its been deemed acceptable before and to whom was a stroke of genius. Barnier stammering that the UK can't get the same without a reason is going to impress nobody neutral.
Why should Barnier care about UK public opinion, or to put it differently, why is UK public opinion more important than EU27 public opinion?
Because the EU don't want us to walk away and the government is prepared to do so.
The UK holds the cards.
Except walking away will be a disaster whatever Boris fanboys say
It really won’t. Covid-19 is a disaster. Hard Brexit is a modest prang in comparison. We might not even notice, amidst the horror of a second wave
The big Brexit news yesterday was the tariff schedule. If the UK doesn't agree an FTA with the EU by December we will be paying an extra £1 per litre for imported olive oil, £1.26 to £1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese, 14% on fresh vegetables, canned tomatoes etc. something ridiculous for yoghurt.
£1.60 per kilogramme for imported cheese?
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
That's parmesan etc. Some of the others are cheaper.
Should add if this goes ahead there will be humongous smuggling from NI to GB. Possibly also across the Channel. Not too sure about those Customs checks being in place.
Comments
Which is why I argued that holding back on the start of lockdown was the right decision.
If hydroxychloroquine becomes an accepted treatment, several pharmaceutical companies stand to profit, including shareholders and senior executives with connections to the president. Mr. Trump himself has a small personal financial interest in Sanofi, the French drugmaker that makes Plaquenil, the brand-name version of hydroxychloroquine.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-malaria-drug.html
And when I was working and the children were small I never went out anywhere - other than children’s parties (l’d have paid good money to avoid those if I could. A special place in Purgatory is reserved for a certain type of party-organising North London Mummy.)
Mind you, Trump is probably stupid enough.
(Daily Mail)
Russia eh?
https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1263174433293860865
A military contractors’ report circulating on Capitol Hill claims to have evidence that COVID-19 escaped from a Chinese lab. It’s filled with information that’s just plain wrong.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/pentagon-contractors-report-on-wuhan-lab-origins-of-coronavirus-is-bogus?ref=scroll
... Multiple congressional committees have obtained and are scrutinizing the 30-page report, produced by the Multi-Agency Collaboration Environment (MACE), a part of Sierra Nevada, a major Department of Defense contractor. The report claims to rely on social media postings, commercial satellite imagery, and cellphone location data to draw the conclusion that some sort of “hazardous event” occurred at the Wuhan virology lab in October 2019—an event that allowed COVID-19 to escape. It’s a theory that has gained currency on the political right and in the upper tiers of the Trump administration.
But the report’s claim centers around missing location data for up to seven phones — and in many cases, less than that. It’s too small a sample size to prove much of anything, especially when the same devices showed similar absences in the spring of 2019. The MACE document claims a November 2019 conference was canceled because of some calamity; in fact, there are selfies from the event.
What’s more, imagery collected by Maxar Technologies satellites and provided to The Daily Beast reveals a simpler, less exotic reason for why analysts believed “roadblocks” went into place around the lab after the supposed accident: road construction. The Maxar images also show typical workdays, with normal traffic patterns around the lab, after the supposedly cataclysmic event....
https://techxplore.com/news/2020-05-apple-google-technology-pandemic-apps.html
Apple and Google on Wednesday released long-awaited smartphone technology to automatically notify people if they might have been exposed to the coronavirus.
The companies said 22 countries and several U.S. states are already planning to build voluntary phone apps using their software. It relies on Bluetooth wireless technology to detect when someone who downloaded the app has spent time near another app user who later tests positive for the virus.
Many governments have already tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to roll out their own phone apps to fight the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of those apps have encountered technical problems on Apple and Android phones and haven't been widely adopted...
https://twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/1263184151043244038
Besides its entirely reasonable for Gove and Frost to say the PD was signed with other precedents in mind.
But I also think annualising GDP changes is stupid. Because it exaggerates one off shocks.
So going with an alternative method first won't have caused a delay presumably since the Google and Apple solution didn't even exist yet?
Wow, or wow. Tell me this is not a voodoo!!!!
If we need to lock down again in my lifetime, I hope we do it much smarter.
It's such an obvious point you must be only too well aware of it.
If Biden somehow wins I suspect there will be lots of "Good Republicans" who will swear they opposed Trump all along.
Yes things could have been done better - its a good thing little reported that discharges from hospitals were 40 down (not up) into care homes, but the discharges that still happened may have been able to be done better - but if the alternative was hundreds of thousands of deaths then a real disaster has been averted.
Lasted longer than the Ed stone though.
That's the whole fucking point.
Parliamentary scrutiny. Of the Government.
Nobody here knows anybody who has the virus. Just saying
In mid March it didn't look that clear - the evidence from Northern Italy in particular was of an unchecked virus infecting large numbers of people and overwhelming intensive care units.
The only way to check the spread of the virus was to reduce transmission and that meant keeping people in their homes away from other people.
As the figures show, the nation was already locking itself down the week after Cheltenham and a week before the "official" announcement from Johnson. I last attended a face-to-face meeting on March 16th and Mrs Stodge was sent home on the 19th - the Government was so far behind what was happening it was embarrassing.
The nation locked itself down as a voluntary act of self preservation and is now unlocking itself as the fear starts to pass.
The care home deaths were because people in a rush to solve problem A (more hospital beds) took shortcuts while solving that problem.
The issue is what limits if any should be placed on this, what the costs of doing so are and whether those costs outweigh or are outweighed by the benefits.
I don't think that seeking to come up with a better form of lockdown is the right response - particularly when the next virus might well spread in different ways, and so would require a different lockdown to be effective. An indiscriminate lockdown will always be the last resort option when other approaches have failed.
What we can see from countries that have had a good response is that we need to be much better prepared to do contact tracing and to have a much greater capacity to expand rapid diagnostic testing. And we need to be less fatalistic about travellers bringing a deadly infection into the country.
I think those would have made the difference between our current ~50,000 deaths and keeping the toll under 1,000. And, of course, the next virus could have an infection fatality rate a lot higher than 1%.
I'd been working from home (Or more accurately working out how to work from home, what I could and couldn't do and thinking about what potential system changes may need to take place) a week before the lockdown as I'd been chatting with a friend who almost certainly had it.
I think we got it right with keeping the manufacturing staff working (socially distanced) and clerical & other office staff transposing to work from home. But the initial Gov't guidance (Subsequently clarified) was a mess for small and medium businesses everywhere.
Speed was of the essence at the start of the lockdown, and some degree of overinterpretation of the general "Stay at Home" message perhaps aided the need to crush down on the infamous R measure quickly. Whether that was the intention of the message I'm not certain.
--AS
And no need for a load of us to travel hundreds of miles to attend, stay away from home in a Travelodge and get home close to midnight tonight.
Success.
I could do the sums for myself if you let me know how many names you post under...
(By the way, AS’s count reset recently for reasons unknown. S/he has posted more than three comments.)
That. Is. A. Disgrace.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
Should add if this goes ahead there will be humongous smuggling from NI to GB. Possibly also across the Channel. Not too sure about those Customs checks being in place.
Now the only risk I run is if Herdwick sheep become killers.........
BBC News - VW pulls Instagram ads after racism row
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52733444
Welcome Mr or Ms Singing!
Good night.
If my analogy was poor, and I am happy to concede, I am not sure yours is much better.
It's always been 'kilogram' rather that 'kilogramme' by the way. I learnt that whilst listening to the bbc service on my radiophone.
One public toilet available in a pandemic is a terrible idea, you're best off with either zero so people use their own campervan, the woods or the sea; or loads open (That encourages people I suppose though).
One is probably the worst number, must have been absolubtely wretched at the end of the day and likely a Covid risk.
(Sadly, my group singing is on indefinite hiatus - the American Choral Directors Association recently convened a medical panel who gave some pretty stark advice about choirs not resuming until a vaccine is available. One can always sing at home, though!)
--AS
"The Bitterness is Epochal." Or is it?
Is the sacrifice made to support your neighbour worth it because seeing them impoverished shouldn't make you feel richer? Maybe the EU will spread its wealth to help all of its members or maybe it won't.
But what is the UK's attitude? "I hope my roof doesn't catch fire from my neighbour's burning house?" Frankly with a view like that, its hardly worth backing, opposing or even engaging with: better gone with all the worst angels of human nature which it has assimilated.
Oh and "let the fat fuckers croak", says more than enough about you.
Homerton, University College London, Hillingdon, North Middlesex, Whittington Health, and Guy’s and St Thomas', were recording up to 16 deaths a day at the peak of the crisis, and have totalled more than 1,000 deaths since the start of the epidemic between them.
Snapshot surveillance data suggests that those aged 17 to 29 are the most likely group to carry the infection - although they are far less likely than older people to fall seriously ill.
The sampling by Public Health England (PHE), which occurred as the epidemic approached its peak, showed that in early April, around 11 per cent of those aged between 17 and 29 were infected with the virus.
Those in their 30s were the age group with the second highest number of infections, at around 10 per cent, with rates closer to seven per cent among those in their 60s.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/20/young-adults-likely-age-group-infected-coronavirus-new-data/
Filthy plague spreading yuff...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-52662338
144 deaths per 100,000 people so that means about 500 dead in Newham so far.
You only have 1930(ish) posts Mr Seal. Expect a sizzling riposte!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/20/healthcare-staff-to-get-coronavirus-antibody-tests-from-next-week
I could do it, of course. I just don't wanna.
Ortho Clinical Diagnostics’ newly PHE-approved test outperformed the other two. Ortho, based in Cardiff for 40 years, says its test is 100% specific for Covid-19, which means it does not confuse the antibodies produced in response to the virus with those from other coronaviruses, including the common cold. Roche’s test has been validated by PHE as 99.8% specific and Abbott’s as 99.6% specific.